In his early days, before he became associated with the “greeting card pop” of “Leader of the Band”, “Longer”, and “Same Auld Lang Syne” Dan Fogelberg was a credible album artist with a musical kinship to the Eagles, America and Jackson Browne.
Guest artists his first few albums included Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey, Randy Meisner, Graham Nash and Chris Hillman. Fogelberg opened concerts for Van Morrison.
Like John Denver, with whom he shared an appeal that never carried overseas to the European market, Fogelberg’s seemed to create his own inimitable genre of folk-infused California rock (even though he wasn’t from California). Once in a while a banjo even came to the fore, just as on early Eagles albums. “Morning Sky” might be a side of Dan you either haven’t heard or had forgotten about.
Nashville power poppers The Shazam can rock it out (see below) but are equally adept with a melancholy melody and pensive lyric. This one sounds like a lost Badfinger song to me.
This is pretty honest stuff. A love song about the nuts-and-bolts, every day slog that love usually ends up being. How rare is a song that, rather than taking the tact of idealizing love, incorporates it into the fabric of mundane, un-ideal everyday existence…
David Ramirez has realistic expectations–just a determined hope that there’s more pretty than gritty to it all. It isn’t what we’re used to in a love song. It almost rings too true.
Rob Montague’s video is every bit as honest and slice-of-life as the song’s sentiments–a perfect tact to take here.
Whinnie Williams: “Break Hearts in Your Sleep” (2013)
Nottingham’s Whinnie Williams cultivates a similar niche of retro girl pop as does Zooey Deschenal in her duo She & Him, but “Break Hearts in Your Sleep” has a lyrical intelligence and a real hook of a chorus that’s a cut above.
Your love is just below the cliff, fall a little bit The corpses of unlucky girls who thought they knew ya And every bad relationship that ended in a mess like this You shook it off, they meant nothing to ya Hey, when your wicked eyes met mine In the way I recognize, have you met your match this time?
You break hearts in your sleep You dream while they weep and wake up to the sound of one more lover leaving You break hearts in your sleep So whats wrong with me? I really want to sleep beside you, I’ve decided
I won’t forget the little words that haunted all those sorry girls who died of love as they hit the ocean You give me all those Bambi eyes But I know what they signify, a lonely boy scared of his emotions Hey, we’re a similar design You’re a mess and so am I, and you’ve met your match this time
You break hearts in your sleep You dream while they weep and wake up to the sound of one more lover leaving You break hearts in your sleep So what’s wrong with me? I really want to sleep beside you, I’ve decided
Deciding to post her song was easy; choosing a single pic of this super-photogenic blonde was much more difficult. A few finalists:
Sometimes it takes a cover version of a song to remind you how great the song was in the first place, when that spark of revelation the original holds has been dimmed somewhat by years of listens.
I was reminded of this when I bought Steel Train’s 1969 EP, which contains five of the band’s favorite songs from that particular year. It would be difficult to select a more diverse five songs: They do the Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back”, Bob Marley’s “Natural Mystic”, David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, the Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, CCR’s “Bad Moon Rising”…and Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Helplessly Hoping”.
It may be sacrilegious to suggest that Steel Train’s performance rivals the CSN original, but if it does so it’s because their take does what a great cover song ought to do: find the essence, the core of the song and bring it to the fore. It’s like restoring a painting–one doesn’t create a new image, but shows us that same masterpiece with fresh, vivid colors. Today’s recording technology, in theory, allows a talented band to produce music with an impact or immediacy the original artist may have achieved but for his cruder tools. While the work of the Masters is genius, the finest examples of their students’ homages seem to say, “Look what the master could have done, if he’d had a proper studio and palette!”.
Okay, maybe that metaphor lends itself better to Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower” vs Dylan’s humble acoustic original (Dylan admitted he wished he’d recorded it like Jimi’s version in the first place). And there’s no doubt CSN’s voices have a distinctiveness that Steel Train’s vocalists lack. But the cover has a crispness and a richness–and perhaps a bit more of a country rock feel (think: Poco’s “Crazy Love”) which makes it a nice listen. And even if it only serves to recreate that epiphany moment when the song came fresh to your ears, that’s a pretty good reason for any good cover song to exist.
In 1965 the Zombies first released “I Love You” as a B-side to A-side “Whenever You’re Ready” (which peaked at #110 in the UK and not at all in the US, which is why you’ve probably never heard either one).
It was released again, this time as an A-side, in ’68. But it came a little late–the group had already disbanded. That same year a California band called People released a version that, while also intended as a B-side, became their only Top 40 hit when it went to #14.
The Zombies’ version features some cool staccato acoustic guitar strumming and a jazzy Rod Argent keyboard solo very similar to the one on their massive 1964 hit “She’s Not There”. I believe it would have been a hit had they released it as an A-side in the first place. Instead it’s a real lost gem.
People’s version isn’t a bad effort either–it lacks Colin Blunstone’s breathy vocals but does have a similar jazzy break and a long, strange, trippy intro.
Every Moment Has A Song 